There are many great InDesign sites, and I wanted to keep InDesign in the name. I’ve created a reference document (which motivated this site) that contains all the InDesign commands and their keyboard shortcuts. The total count of commands for IDCS3 is over 1200. So, while the name might not make too much sense, hopefully the site will be join the ranks of the InDesign-prefixed greats like indesignsecrets.com, theindesigner.com, indesigncentral.com.

Over the years I’ve created and evolved my little document into it current iteration. I’ve shared with peers, trainees, seminar attendees, family and friends. I’ve distributed it through file-hosting sites like box.net, through Adobe Exchange, and most recently a dedicated page within Loop’s (current employer) website. 

Thankfully, it’s been mentioned and recognized by some of the InDesign greats, namely Tim Cole, Steve Werner, and Sebastian Distefano. The last of which I owe much gratitude for encouraging my efforts.

I was annoyed by the lack of a decent cheat sheet for the many shortcuts within InDesign. Yes, there was the Adobe InDesign CS3 Help Center, which was great. Yes, I could have InDesign generate a text file that contained all the commands. I decided to use that text file as a starting point…

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The text file was not very readable and, in my opinion, was not organized in logical manner. By reworking that raw text file within InDesign I started to explore InDesign’s various features. It provided an opportunity to discover and incorporate various techniques and tips that I had picked up from many sources.

As I shared my reference document, I had to consider others. I wanted to provide folks with more than just a PDF. I wanted people to jump into the guts of the native InDesign document. I wanted them to explore. I wanted them to make their own change, their own custom shortcuts. With that in mind, I needed to organize the InDesign document so it could be interpreted by others.

As people have discovered my little project they’ve also formulated many questions:

• Why did I name / organize my styles the way I did?
• Why did I set the shortcuts the way I did?
• How did I create the alternating rows effect?
• How did I save so much time creating nested / next styles?

With the list of questions growing, I felt this website could hold the answers, in the form of blog entries. Bear with me as this blog hopefully matures into something great and worthy of finding a home in your list of bookmarks. Entries will start text-based with the necessary screenshots. Down the road, I hope to introduce screencasts.

Again, the details of the InDesign document, as well as the corresponding interactive PDF, can be found in the shortcuts section. I hope the contents of my posts will include:

• my favourite shortcuts
• techniques I used, and their references (site, magazine, peer)
• document structure

I’m not making any promises on the frequency of future posts, as I have a full time job, a social life, plus a beautiful wife (as of September 13th, 2008) that deserves much more attention than I give here. Here’s to looking to a potentially worthwhile adventure.